A Little Goes a Long Way
Last week, a family friend who teaches at a local middle
school invited me to her classroom. She
wanted someone to teach her sixth graders about sediments, nutrients, and the
Bay. I agreed, and took Krystal, one of
my co-workers, along. We had an amazing
day. All in all, I think we talked to
about 300 incredibly smart 6th graders!
They knew that sediment clouds the water and covers any organisms on the
bottom, that the watershed is made up of six states (naming them was more challenging),
and that oysters used to be able to filter the entire volume of the Bay in
three days. (It now takes almost a year!) The kids had a great background of
information, so we added to it a little bit.
We’ve all heard that nutrients in the Bay are harmful and
cause algal blooms and dead zones. The
best question of the day, however, came from a student who asked, “If plants
need nutrients to grow, why aren’t the bay grasses growing a lot and providing
oxygen for the animals at the bottom?” I
had been waiting for someone to ask that!
He was right, the plants have all the nutrients that they could ever
want; the problem is that the plants don’t get enough light. Algae float near the surface, soak up
sunlight and nutrients, and form a layer over the water’s surface. That layer, (plus the murkiness due to sediment),
blocks sunlight. Not enough reaches the
bottom to let the grasses grow. As the
plants and older generations of algae die, they sink to the bottom and
decompose. Decomposers use oxygen. Without plants to provide oxygen, whatever
was left in the water is sucked out by decomposers, leaving an anoxic or “dead”
zone every summer.
Krystal and I had a wrap-up discussion with the students,
where we all listed things we could do
to help the Bay. They knew the basics, like recycling and car-pooling, and that
every little bit helps. They were
excited to hear other opportunities, though.
Some students live on waterfront property, and were eager to go home and
ask their parents if they could grow
oyster spat for a year. Some have
yards that are fertilized twice a year, and were concerned when it was
suggested that they skip the spring treatments and wait until fall. Several students even asked if there was
someplace they could volunteer.
Krystal and I left that day feeling like we’d made a small impact,
but apparently we did more than we thought.
The next day, I was handed a hundred or so thank-you letters from the students. Most were the typical “thanks for coming,”
but several got me really excited! One
said that they went home and told their dad not to fertilize this year. Another said that she’ll make sure her
parents clean up after the family dog. A
third got permission from her parents to raise oysters and wanted more
information. All of this reaction came
out of a 30-minute talk! The kids were
so eager to help, once they saw the real problem. It didn’t take much; an explanation of what’s happening, a picture of the Bay from last summer, and some easy tips to help
out. All they needed was to know what they
can do.
I sincerely hope they continue their enthusiasm through adulthood,
and I hope it’s as contagious for everyone else as it was for Krystal and me!
Biodiversity conference links Bay and global habitat issues
Karey Harris is the toxics subcommittee staffer with the Chesapeake Research Consortium at the Chesapeake Bay Program office.
Imagine seeing a video of a frog in the Amazon that was
believed to be extinct until she was caught on this tape. You see her, abdomen full of eggs, struggle
to get to water to lay her eggs. What a
find! How exciting for that scientist behind the camera! Then you are told that she was ill, died soon
after the video was taken, and no other frogs of her species have been found
since. She is currently in a jar in the
Smithsonian. Just an instant after you
expect to hear a success story, you realize that you have just watched a
species go extinct from the planet. That
happened to me last week, and this little frog tugged at my heart like no amphibian
before.
I had the pleasure of attending the 9th National
Conference on Science, Policy, and the Environment held by the National Council for Science and the Environment
(NCSE) at the Reagan Building in Washington,
D.C. on December 8-10. This year’s conference topic
was “Biodiversity in a Rapidly Changing World,” during which, among other
activities, I watched the frog go extinct.
So why tell the sad story?
As species go extinct worldwide, we are losing biodiversity as
well. Biodiversity
is lengthily defined as “the variability among living organisms from all
sources … and the ecological complexes of which they are a part; this includes
diversity within species, between species, and of ecosystems.” Without all the
words, a place that has good biodiversity has many different species all living
in a small area. A coral reef is probably
the most vivid example, with its multitudes of coral, anemones, and fish. An environment with very little biodiversity
may be as bleak as a cornfield, all dominated by the same species with a few
others thrown in. Biodiversity is often
used as a measure of ecosystem health.
As biodiversity decreases, the ecosystem’s health and stability
decreases as well.
(Check out an
example of good biodiversity from MarineBio, versus an
example of bad biodiversity from Holistic Management.)
The three-day conference focused on ways to preserve
biodiversity worldwide. Topics covered
policy and legislation, scientific research gaps, and communication to the
public. Speakers who made their case for
making changes and saving biodiversity included the director of the
Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and a Pulitzer Prize-winning
author! Each day after the speakers, various
breakout sessions were offered to give each participant an individual
experience. I could write pages on what
I learned in those discussions, and I have a stack of literature on my desk
that I still need to read!
In addition to new things, I heard several familiar
themes: less pollution, more preserved land, better land use, teach the public
how to be more environmentally responsible, and so on. Some of these are ideas we
focus on here at the Bay Program. Since
this conference had a global focus, we must not be so far off base in our ideas
of how to save our Bay. I hope that one
day the world, and the Bay, will resemble the thriving systems they once were,
in part because this conference had something good to say.